Arnold Schwarzenegger biography

"You have to be very careful to make pictures not just for yourself, but for the people," says Arnold Schwarzenegger. And that he has done. In spades.

People laughed at the body-building hunk from Graz, Austria, when he set his sights on being a Hollywood star. But they're not laughing anymore and haven't been for some time now.

Schwarzenegger has an indomitable will to succeed as he made clear when he decided in his teens to use body-building as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. At 20, he became the youngest Mr. Universe ever. A year later he starred in his first movie. Granted, it wasn't that good a movie. But he'd begun his climb to the top. Not that he needed the money. Before his mega-successful movie career, Schwarzenegger had already made himself into a millionaire with his real estate dealings and mail-order business selling fitness books and cassette tapes, all the while completing a correspondence courses from the University of Wisconsin which ended in his bachelor's degree in business and international economics.

By the time the body-building documentary Pumping Iron made him a national celebrity, Schwarzenegger was already tooling around Los Angeles in a Mercedes Benz and living in a $200,000 house. Like few pumped-up action stars before him, Schwarzenegger has also been able to combine light comedy with his more muscle-bound roles, scoring box office hits in the process with such films as Twins and Kindergarten Cop. The Terminator (1984) was a huge hit that spawned two sequelsTerminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines (2003).

He has been married to Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy clan, since 1986 and it seems that his wife's political genes may be running off on Schwarzenegger, although unlike Shriver's uncles, Robert and John F. Kennedy, Schwarzenegger is a Republican. After being elected Governor of California on October 7, 2003, he put his movie career on hold to fulfil political duties.

In May 2011, Shriver and Schwarzenegger separated after it was revealed in the media that he had fathered a son over fourteen years ago with a woman who had worked as a housekeeper in their home. Although Schwarzenegger reportedly spent a lot of time the child, the boy never knew who his real father was until the story was covered by the press.